


In All The Wide, Wide World

by RaisingCaiin



Category: The Lord of the Rings - All Media Types, The Lord of the Rings - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Gen, M/M, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Pre-Slash, Prompt Fill, let me just say in advance that I'm sorry
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-07
Updated: 2017-07-09
Packaged: 2018-11-29 02:52:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 6,502
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11431641
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RaisingCaiin/pseuds/RaisingCaiin
Summary: Following the War of the Ring, Gimli has questions.This does not necessarily mean that anyone can offer him answers.





	1. Chapter 1

It was a day most fair by any reckoning, as even the elements seemed to rejoice in their recent liberation from the Dark Lord’s iron grasp. Soaring above the marble spires of Minas Tirith, the Sun shone clear and bright without overbearing heat, and small puffs of cloud, more ornament than threat of rain, raced across a vast blue stretch of sky with cheerful busyness. A light breeze wound its playful way across various levels of the Guarded City, solid enough to bear a cool touch of air but not quite strong enough to cause more mischief than a brief, unexpected flutter of banners. Many of Gondor’s citizens, and even a good number of the city’s many visitors, could be heard remarking, in tones of wonderment, that they had not seen so fair a day or sky since, well –

Since the War had begun. And since It had begun, really, well before most of those now alive here could remember, that meant days such as this were an utter novelty to be admired and enjoyed by all.

Or almost all. If pressed, Gimli imagined, he could most likely utter a few praises for such a harmonious arrangement of weather conditions, but – not otherwise. Not that he was one to begrudge such enjoyment to those who could still feel it, no, but for him, it was hardly the first thing on his mind.

Though neither did it seem to be high on the list for those he had wound his way through the City to come and see this morning.

 “Any objections if I step in fer a spell?”

Out on the small balcony before him, two heads pulled reluctantly apart as Aragorn and his Elf-queen, seated on a short bench, turned where they sat to face Gimli where he stood, hand still raised from rapping on the entryway arch. Below their small hideaway sprawled the six lower levels of Minas Tirith, a dazzling map of activity overlaid across the glimmering stone, but it seemed unlikely that these two had simply been enjoying the view.

Had he anyone to wager with, Gimli would have bet that kisses had been exchanged right up until the point where he’d reached their hearing.

But there was no one to wager with him, so the happy suspicion went unremarked.

“Ordinary times, I would never step in on y’ so, being newly wed and all,” he continued, his voice sounding scratched and strained to even his own ears. It sent a pang through him to disturb them, it did – reunited against all odds so soon after a war no one had really expected to win in any conclusive way. But. . . “But I – I can’t think of anyone else I might go to, with this.”

“It is no imposition, Gimli, of course,” Aragorn said, his voice warm and welcoming. He leaned away from his queen and, bless his heart, stood without a sign that he resented the interruption, coming to greet Gimli with the exchange of handshakes customary to Men. “How are you faring, my friend? If there is ought we can do for you, you know you only need ask.”

Gimli gave a grunt of thanks, but even such open-hearted generosity could not avail him now. And Aragorn, by the shadow of concern across his face, knew that, but had made the gesture all the same.

“Eh, well.” He followed the Man further out onto the balcony, pausing beside the bench to give the new queen a respectful bow in the Mannish fashion. “Was hoping to talk to the lady, actually.”

Aragorn, arrested in the action of reclaiming his seat on the bench, looked startled for a brief second before rallying rather nicely. “Ah. Well, then. Gimli, my friend, it is my pleasure to name to you Arwen Undómiel, Queen of the Reunited Kingdoms of the West!”

He smiled as he said this, as if the name were some secret joke between the two, and Arwen Undómiel, Queen of the Reunited Kingdoms of the West, shoved lightly at his shoulder, shaking her head in fond exasperation.

“Was there for the coronation same as you, I know her title,” Gimli grumbled. Blast the Man. “Lady, what name am I to use? Don’t much care for the thought of accidentally calling you by a sweetheart’s loving-name.”

Aragorn blushed and sputtered, as if there were some way Gimli could have possibly missed that little byplay.

 “ ‘Arwen’ will do quite well,” the queen said, with a smile at her wayward husband. Her voice was lower, deeper, than Gimli had expected. “What may I do for you, Elf-friend?”

Oh. That was a surprise. “You’ve heard of me?”

“The Lady Galadriel is my mother’s mother,” the queen said, and aye – that explained a lot, didn’t it. “She does not often offer such honors as she did to you, so yes, I have most certainly heard of you.”

“Ah. Well.” Gimli found himself almost missing the support of the doorframe – something, anything, to lean on. If Arwen Undómiel, Queen of the Reunited Kingdoms of the West, had any measure of the sight or understanding possessed by her kinswoman, that made his question harder to ask and not even easier to answer.

But at least she did not rush him to speak. Her eyes, when he could look up to meet them, were as uncanny and unrevealing as her grand-dame’s, and he could not hold them long. But there was also a gentleness there, and a level of more worldly knowledge, that he could not remember seeing in the Lady Galadriel, and it was seeing these now, in the end, that finally pressed him to speak.

Steady on, Gimli.

“I wanted to ask you something.” Deep breaths, Gimli, deep breaths, naught you can learn here that would make this any worse than it is as it stands. . . “Something about Elves.”

“Something about Legolas,” Undómiel concluded for him, quietly.

There was a great rushing noise in his ears, and Gimli found his seat planted firmly on the cool marble balcony floor. With a stifled exclamation Aragorn rushed to help him up.

“Off, off, I’m fine, I’m fine.” Still somewhat dizzy from the sheer unexpectedness of it, Gimli waved Aragorn’s hand away and struggled to his own two feet himself. Blast this for a spectacle. . .

“You’ve heard of him too, then?” he asked the queen, hoarsely.

“Some,” Undómiel said kindly, her voice still low and soothing despite the unexpected awareness it bore. “I know he was a member of your Fellowship, celebrated for their bravery and valor, and of the Three Hunters, renowned for their resilience and loyalty.”

“Aye,” said Gimli, his own voice rough. Aragorn had told her then. But how much?

“I am told that there was great friendship between you,” she continued.

“Aye,” said Gimli. That had most certainly come from Aragorn.

“And I know that he died at Pelargir,” she concluded.  

“Aye,” said Gimli.

That, though, she could have learned from anyone, anyone, in all the wide, wide world.


	2. Chapter 2

“Gimli!” For all his ungainly clambersome movement, the disheveled Aragorn was yet a welcome sight to eyes sore with dirt and strain. “Gimli, we have sought you all over the field!”

Though he would be more welcome still if he could just let a body catch its breath, of course. . .

“And now you’ve found me, well done.” Gimli waved the Man off with a pained grunt, still bent almost double over the handle of his own axe with the effort of breathing deep. For Mahal’s love, he’d fought his way up and out of the glittering, stone-strewn caverns beneath the horsemen’s great fortress, combating rockslides, treacherous footing, and stone-damned orcs the entire way. Did such a feat not entitle him to enjoy a few good lung-filling breaths in a row?

Aragorn seemed to think not. “Gimli, you must come with me at once.”

“ ‘At once’ had best mean ‘in your own time, Master Dwarf, when you have recovered from such feats of arms as the world has not seen in an Age,’” Gimli grumbled. “By the quiet and the stench, I would say we won, eh?” And he would figure out how that was possible as soon he got his wind back, see if he didn’t. . .

“Gimli.” But it was Aragorn’s refusal to rise to such bait, even more than his grim tone, that set Gimli’s back to straightening and his hands to clenching despite their weariness. “Gimli, it is Legolas.”

“Blasted elf,” Gimli muttered, a chill shuddering down his spine even as he willed Aragorn to echo the old complaint that had long united the two of them against the single Elven member of the Hunters. “What’s he done now?”

What he had done, it turned out, was to take some extensive injury while Gimli had not been at his side. Of course he had.

They could hear his keening – a high, thin, wretched sound that blended in and out of the notes on the wind – long before they could see him, even before entering the Hornburg itself. Gimli bulled his way right through guards and wounded alike, Aragorn trailing in his furious wake, til they reached the makeshift infirmary being cobbled together on the floors of the main hall.

While Aragorn stopped to ask after the Elf, Gimli simply followed his ears, all the way to an alcove off the hall itself. There Legolas lay thrashing atop a dirty cot, three of the horsefolk’s healers trying and failing to restrain his movements, that horrible noise from his throat rising higher and higher the harder they held him.  

“What is this?” He shouldered them aside without no further thought, grabbing not for his friend’s shoulders or legs as they had, but only for his hands. “Legolas. Legolas, lad, enough, enough!”

But Legolas let go immediately, refusing the grip of his rough leather gloves and instead reaching further, his fingers frantic and questing until they met the coarse, matted mess of his beard. Then, and only then, did that heart-piercing keening slow, fading into rough, sobbing hitches of breath that sounded wrenched from the back of his throat. 

“Gimli?” And oh, but it was hard to hear the wreck that had been made of his friend’s voice. “Gimli? They – they told me-“  
  
“That I could not be found, likely, Men being the blind bastards that they are,” Gimli growled, and there was an answering inhale from Legolas that could, in better circumstances, have developed into a laugh. “But I am here now, and there is no need to fret.” As if fretting could really describe the horrible noises he had just been making. “What ever have you done to yourself, lad?”

“It is – it is of no matter,” Legolas insisted, though the continued hitches in his breath would have spoken to the lie even if Gimli could somehow miss the blood matting the Elf’s hair. “Or of less, anyway, now that – now that I know – that you are well.”

With a great effort of will, Gimli pushed that particular statement aside for later. “Hmph. You know, I think I will be the judge of what is a little matter here, Elf.” Somewhere behind them, Aragorn was reasoning with the healers, perhaps pointing out that Gimli had been able to calm their charge where all else had failed, but Gimli cared not. “And by my judgment this, whatever it is, does not seem a little matter.”

For the pieces were falling together now, little as he liked the picture they seemed to be painting. Legolas could not be calmed by word or deed, had not accepted care from friendly healers, and perhaps most damningly, had not even looked to him or Aragorn when they had entered, so that it had taken Gimli’s voice and the feel of his beard to calm the Elf.

“Legolas.” Only rarely did he use his friend’s name, usually preferring instead to fall back on the now-softened barbs of their established banter. If his suspicions were correct, though, this was no occasion for even that. “Can – can you see me?”

“I. . “ The hitch was back. “I cannot.” There was another hitch, almost a sob. “I am – my sight is gone.” Faster and faster his words came, as if in speaking them the Elf was finally realizing the truth of his state. “Ai, Gimli! I cannot sort friend from enemy, could not tell it was you at the door until you reached my side.” His fingers in Gimli’s beard quivered and clenched, but Gimli did not even think to protest the pain. “And if I cannot mark my target, if I cannot nock or loose my bow –!”

Beneath Gimli’s very hands he could feel the Elf’s breathing speed faster and faster until he lost speech altogether.

The next several minutes were a blur, as Aragorn roared for the healers to return and resume their work, and the now-timid horsefolk administered what treatments they could, cleaning and dressing some wound at Legolas’s head that Gimli had not the height nor will to fully observe. Throughout it all, Legolas’s breath sped and slowed, raced and stuttered, and it was only Gimli’s hands gripping his where they remained in his hair, Gimli’s voice muttering what encouragement and insults he knew naught – anything to keep his friend’s will strong, his thoughts calm – that kept him still enough for them to tend to him at all.

Night was long fallen by the time the horsefolk finished their work, and the Three Hunters were left alone in that alcove. Aragorn had gone and returned with some strong-smelling broth, but Legolas had not the strength nor stomach, and Gimli found he had not either. Terrible things he had seen left, and done, along the course of this quest – and even before, for Gimli was no unblooded warrior, but a guard of Erebor long before Dáin had sent him along with his father to the Peredhel’s council in Rivendell – and objectively, a single warrior with a single injury was not so great a thing.

Not that he could be objective about this particular warrior, though, nor this particular injury to him.

“Gimli,” Legolas said softly, the Elf’s hands falling at last – Mahal but he held tight even in his infirmity – back to his own sides and his head turning as if he would look at him, despite both bandages and unseeing eyes. “Gimli, mellon, you are with me still?”

“Still here.” Though perhaps he was nodding off a little, and who could blame him, it had been a long and terrible day – no, make it several days. . .

“Gimli?” But there was something new, and odd, creeping into Legolas’s voice – not fear, precisely, and not weariness, but some hesitant combination of the two. “Gimli, I am being called.”

“No one’s calling you, lad.” Of this Gimli was sure – even the bustle of the makeshift healing hall outside had died down some, as the horsefolk settled in from finding to tending to their wounded.  “I think even these Men can see that you’ve earned yourself a rest, Elf.”

“But I don’t want to go,” Legolas confided, a plaintive sound in his throat that in anyone else Gimli would have called a whimper. “I have not done my part yet!”

“You’ve done your part and plenty more besides, daft Elf.” Behind them Aragorn gave an odd, choking sort of cough, perhaps protesting the magnitude of the lie when those poor young hobbits were still lost somewhere out in the wide, wide world, and the Ring certainly had not been destroyed.

“But I can hear him,” Legolas whispered, almost fretful. Blast Aragorn and his indicative little coughing fit. “Why, Gimli? What have I done wrong?”

Gimli spared a breath to turn and glare at Aragorn, who had half-risen from his seat in the corner and was staring at them in something akin to fear. Blast the Man, couldn’t he just accept that this was a time for reassurance? To Gimli’s mind, Legolas had more than earned himself a limp off the battlefield for the remainder of the War.

“Nothing you’ve done wrong, Elf.” It was hard, so hard, to force the scoff back into his voice as though they were having one of their old spats, but Gimli rather thought he managed it. “Talking as though you’ve not been in battle, hrmph, and had some thrice-damned orc get close enough to comb that hair of yours so roughly.”

“It wasn’t an orc,” Legolas said, slowly, with a great, shuddering intake of breath. “They’d brought – some manner – of device – released – great gouts – of air and flame– most fearsome weapon. It- they- took down half – the walls – one blow. A-ask Aragorn – if you suspect – telling tales – to impress you.”

As if he would ask Aragorn, when all the Man could do was cough and mutter when Legolas was in need of rest. “Doesn’t matter, I’m not impressed anyway. Sleep, now. ‘M not going anywhere, and neither are you.”

“I am not to go?” Legolas whispered.

“Mmmm?” Stone, what he wouldn’t give for a breath to sit down, everyone seemed to have forgotten that Gimli himself had fought long and hard for Helm’s Deep this day too. . . “No, of course not. We’ll figure out how to get you moved when you’re rested up, but not until then. All right?”

“All – all is right,” Legolas repeated, dutifully. “Thank you, Gimli.”

“ ‘S nothing, Elf. Now, Mahal’s sake, sleep!”

Aragorn finally came to stand at his side when Legolas had succumbed to the strange, wide-eyed slumber of the Elves, and Gimli was just struggling to pull another of the too-tall Mannish chairs closer to his bedside. “Gimli. What did he say to you about a call?”

“Some nonsense about one of the healers calling him. Pull this up for me, would you?” He grunted as he settled in. “Much appreciated. And let him alone already, eh?”

“Gimli,” Aragorn said again.

“That’s my name, aye, and I’m not planning on changing it anytime soon,” Gimli told him wearily. “Be off with you – I’m staying with him.”

“But, Gimli, I think-“

“Aragorn. Go.” Gimli patted Legolas’s hand with some fondness before looking back to where the Man still hovered. “Stop looking like he’s dying, they said he would recover in time.” Aragorn looked less than convinced. “Save us all from the hard-headness of men and the soft-headedness of Elves! Go and have those scratches looked at, get some meat in your belly, tumble a rider who’s as surprised to have survived as you are. We’re not going anywhere.”

Except that, eventually, they did. Though his sight had not returned by the time it was decided that they would ride to Isengard, Legolas was hale enough to walk and to sit a horse, and he would not suffer to remain in the Hornburg, threatening to follow their company, sightless though he was, if left behind. When Théoden questioned this, Aragorn confirmed that the Elf had enough craft and skill with both horse and wilds to do just that if pressed.

“Although,” the Man added, with all the grimness that Gimli had come to expect of him when displeased, “no craft nor skill will be quite enough to make up for working eyes, should he or his horse come under attack while about such a mad undertaking.”

“Bury us all, for shame!” His exasperation showed more than he would have liked, but Gimli was growing weary of such mutterings, and, less than he liked to admit, of their probable truth. “Let him ride with me as we have always done, and he shall stay with us until his sight returns, or we find such haven as may be had in these dark times.”

Legolas beamed, and Aragorn sighed, and Théoden looked from one to the other to the other of them in confusion, but Gimli stood firm. Gandalf, singe his beard for the unhelpful crow he was, just puffed on his pipe and smiled as he watched them argue it out. 

Managing Arod took time and patience, as Gimli now had to take first seat – “Fine, Elf, I will tell you where to go and then you tell him, the blasted hay-muncher ignores every word that I say!” – but still they kept pace with the combined company to Isengard. There, Legolas seemed to find their reunion with the two younger hobbits – and the discovery that they had found food and drink and pipestuffs finer than anything anyone had had since Rivendell – undimmed by his misfortune, though of course the impertinent young things pestered him for all the details that Gimli would have spared him from reliving. And Gimli could feel the Elf’s sorrow at being unable to see the Ents, towering creatures that stood like trees and walked like dreams, but Legolas glowed with happiness at being able to speak with their leader.

And this way, Gimli thought, at least Legolas was spared the frightful vision that was the drowned valley and untouched Orthanc, or the mad wizard atop the black tower’s spire who turned his honeyed tongue upon each of their captains in turn. His sight gone, Legolas did not suffer the full terror of that dread day when dawn did not come and all the world seemed wreathed by the fumes of Mordor, or of that first realization that this gaping maw into a rank mountainside led to those very Paths of the Dead that Aragorn and his kinsmen, Rangers and Peredhil alike, planned to tread. The Elf’s hand upon Gimli’s shoulder all through that terrible day on the Paths, as Man and Dwarf and Half-Elf alike fought their fear at the rising whispers of shades, was as much an anchor to Gimli as Gimli himself was guide for Legolas’s steps; the Elf’s laughter when he felt the cooler night breeze upon descending into Erech raised the whole company’s spirits, as ill as it matched the ominous Stone that Aragorn had led them to circle.

It was then, the Dead summoned and constrained to fight at Aragorn’s side in the upcoming days, that the Man tried once more to persuade the Elf that he must stay behind.

“There will still be folk at Ciril, either at the ford itself or within the towns further west.” Aragorn spoke sense, but even in the dim light Legolas looked utterly mulish; Gimli would have laughed at such a childish set of face had his own spirit not been sore pressed with all that he had seen and heard upon the Paths during the day just passed.

Seeing how ill his persuasion fared, Aragorn tried again. “Legolas, it is not that we would abandon you, not after we have come so far, and certainly not for any price we might pay. But from here it is three days’ hard ride into battle at Pelargir, and there, I fear, that for all your strength and courage, your blindness will render you a liability to yourself.”

It did Gimli’s heart some undefined good to see Legolas toss his proud head at this statement, much as Arod often did when challenged – though Gimli, of course, would never have admitted this comparison to either of the parties so compared. “Your concern is noted, Aragorn, but neither admitted nor accepted. I will not hinder you nor any member of your company – I can tell between light and darkness, hear more keenly now than ever before. I will neither stall nor slow you!”

“Much will such news skills avail you when day will not dawn again, nor give you near enough light and dark to tell by – much more will they serve you, in the thick of battle!” Aragorn’s exhaustion was evident in his voice, for he rarely snapped so. “Legolas, be reasonable, please. If you will not think of yourself, then, think of Gimli and myself! How will we fare, if made to keep watch upon you while also defending ourselves?”

And ohhhhh, Gimli thought even as he clambered to his dead-weary feet, that just would not do. That would not do at all. Dimly, he recognized what Aragorn was trying to do; distantly, he could even appreciate it. But to insinuate that Legolas was in any manner a burden, no matter how well-meaningly. . .

Gimli could not let that stand. Not for Legolas, whose face was already falling, and –

And not for himself.

“Don’t fret yourself on that score then, lad.” Even as he addressed Aragorn, Gimli came to stand behind Legolas, putting his own hand upon the Elf’s shoulder in the same hold that Legolas had had upon his, all throughout their grim flight along the Paths. “I will watch for him.”

Aragorn looked to him despairingly, as if he had expected a more sensible approach from Gimli of all folk. But again, as when Legolas had pressed to remain with them, Gimli stood firm, and after further reasoning fell upon unhearing ears, Aragorn had tossed up his hands and left them.

Gimli huffed as he rolled their spare cloaks and saddle cloths out to create some semblance of a larger bedroll. “Fear we’ll will have to stand our own separate watch, Elf, otherwise they’ll try to sneak off without us. Hrmph. Listen for them, eh, and wake me for the last watch?”

Legolas lowered himself into the shared space without complaint. “I will. And thank you, my friend, for standing with me. I will not be left behind, not now, not when I know there is more I can do and give. For that must be why I was allowed to refuse, and to stay, was it not?”

“Mmmm.” Gimli stared down at his friend’s huddled form with some trepidation – hadn’t quite realized how _close_ they would be, set up this way – but grunted at his own foolishness and lay down with a huff, pulling the last of the cloaks so that it near covered his head. “You do realize that you will have to follow my lead, though, eh?”

“Mmm.” Stone, he could feel Legolas’s breath on the back of his head as the Elf chuckled and whispered. “If you are to direct my aim, I suppose you have no excuse for not winning our next competition, then!”

“Not that you’re actually going to be fighting,” Gimli corrected quietly, mustering a tremendous effort of will to ignore another way that particular statement might be understood. They had never – Legolas would never –

Mahal save him from the unthinking speech of Elves praising their weapons. Steady on, Gimli.

“Afraid that if I had my bow but not my sight I would still win our standing wager, Master Dwarf?” Legolas prodded, a tiny tinge of glee coloring his voice. It was more than passing odd to speak so dismissively of such a grave injury, but Legolas seemed the better for the light treatment – as if, Gimli suspected, speaking of his lost sight as a temporary setback in fact made it so. 

When he could muster enough thought to suspect, of course.

“More concerned that you would have no way of ensuring that bow was not actually aimed at me.” The concern had sounded clearer and more teasing in his head, but whispered into the still night air, it sounded more like –

Damn it all.

Five long fingers descended tentatively atop his shoulder, as if Legolas was uncertain of both its location and his own welcome there. “Gimli?”

Damn it _all_.

“Not now, Elf.”

But the Elf would not be dissuaded so lightly. “If not now, though, then when? I – I would have spoken sooner, but – I did not guess, I could not have dreamed-”

“Elf.” If he did not stop speaking soon – if _they_ did not stop speaking soon – stone take them, this was not a conversation to be had at the very doorstep of the Dead, the night before a mad ride and a madder gamble that Gimli knew could cost them both their lives if he was not rested and fresh, able to watch for and protect them both. “Legolas. We will speak of it, I swear to you. Later, when this is done. When we are safe. When we can speak as we ought, as this deserves.”

“Ai, meleth. It pains me to wait, but you are wise to suggest it!” Behind him Legolas shifted, perhaps leaning up on an arm, low enough that the Men would not see him; his fingers on Gimli’s shoulder shifted, moving forward and tracking across his face as if seeking their place. Gimli only realized why when Legolas himself leaned over, laying a soft, chaste kiss to his cheek. “Think of this, then, and hold it against your heart as a pledge of better times!”

But no better times came. For at Pelargir, the corsairs of Umbar had arrows, well-fletched and ill-spelled, shot high and swift beyond reach of axe or sword or any sense that was not sight.

And there at the harbor of Pelargir fell Legolas of the Woodland Realm, just within hearing of the Sea.


	3. Chapter 3

Aragorn’s face had blanched soon after Gimli began the telling – for how little of the story he had known, perhaps, or else for his own part in it? But Gimli had not come to find and place fault with the Man – it had been Gimli himself, after all, who had insisted that he could protect his greatest friend despite such terrible danger, and Gimli too who had failed in that pledge. He had not come in fruitless search of absolution for such a wretched failure.

Instead of watching Aragorn, then, Gimli focused on his queen, whose attention had not faltered once since this halting confession began.

But now there only remained one part – the last part, the hardest – to tell.

“We were on the docks; the fighting was fierce, but not as hot where we stood, for the Dead Men swept on ahead and devoured all in their path, and your husband’s kinsmen took the sides, cutting down all who would flee. He-“

But here Gimli’s voice faltered. He could not name Legolas.

He tried again.

“He was at my back. Crouched low and wary, as I had told him, and jabbering away about one thing or another, as he does- _did_. As he did. When suddenly he fell quiet. I looked behind me, and he was only wonderstruck – he said it was the cry of the gulls. He had never heard them before, he said. He had never been within sight or sound of the Sea.”

“I thought that was all. So I turned back – to the watch, to the fight before me. But that was not all, or else it was more than I knew, for he remained wary no more. By my guess he stood, and – and by his height our enemy knew him for an Elf, and – and he knew not, and I saw naught, and he was shot.”

But Gimli did not tell Undómiel, or Aragorn, that Legolas had not cried out – could not tell his sympathetic friend and this kindly queen that he had not even known the Elf had fallen, until he had looked behind once more and seen that slight figure already lain limp across the wood of the docks, blood pooling about the holes made by three long, dark-fletched arrows in his chest. Here and now, in the sweet light of a sun restored to the world and the wholesome air of a wind without taint, no words could suffice to explain how Gimli had knelt at his friend’s side, had checked frantically for breath or pulse or any sign of life – and had found nothing, nothing at all, neither sound nor sign nor final farewell.

But what he _could_ say now, had thus been said; what he _could_ do now, in the all-too-impotent present, had also been done. Gimli struggled to meet Undómiel’s eyes. “And so, great lady, as one of that kindred yourself, I pray that you can tell me: what did I miss?”

Undómiel seemed to think on this for a time – a time in which, it seemed to Gimli, years turned and cities crumbled. And certainly the sun rose a little higher in the sky, walking bright gold fingers up the edges of the little balcony, before at last she spoke. “If you knew that my answer could bring you no comfort, Elf-friend, would you still seek it?”

A senseless question, when his comfort was the least of stakes concerned here. “Lady, I seek only to learn what I did amiss, or what I might have done that I did not do, and that only so I might know where the fault lies. Whether or not I have such knowledge, I will grieve; whether or not I leave here with answers, I will know that I can make no amends for the loss of a spirit that should never have known itself lost.”

Aragorn drew in a deep, pained breath at this, and without even looking back, Undómiel rested a gentle hand upon his knee.

 “Those of Elvenkind, whether of Sindar or Noldor or Vanyar blood, are tied to this world,” Undómiel began. The names held no meaning – maybe there were different kinds of elves, who knew? – but Gimli sensed that they were important somehow, and struggled to listen. “Not merely to Middle-earth, though, Elf-friend, but to this creation as a united whole – the sphere of sky and sea and shore that Eru Ilúvatar enclosed within His hand and decreed habitable for His Children.”

Aragorn’s hand, shaking even to Gimli’s sight, came to rest over hers where it lay on his knee.

“When the body of an Elf perishes, then, their spirit flies West. Not to leave this world, but to inhabit a different part of it – a good place, a green place, away across the Sea and set apart from the sufferings and trials inherent to these shores. But Elves were not meant to experience this separation of body and spirit, even in direst circumstances, and so it only happens when they are called West by Mandos of the Valar.”

Called?

But hadn’t Legolas. . .

Oh.

Mahal.

Gimli turned and stepped away, moving to lean against the balcony, his back to Aragorn and Undómiel as realization struck.

“He was called at Helm’s Deep, you mean.”

“From the sound of it, he was,” Undómiel confirmed quietly.

“He didn’t die, though.”

 _He stayed for you_ , Undómiel very graciously didn’t say.

“An Elf may refuse the call of Mandos,” she said instead. “For whatever reason – fear, or pride, or longing, or love – they may choose to remain upon these shores, clinging to hold body and spirit together, or, when that is impossible, lingering on as a spirit alone, roaming these lands until in the end all the world is pulled undone and neither Middle-earth nor the West remains.”

It seemed a very great choice, and yet. . .

“And the gulls, love?” In the privacy of his own head Gimli blessed Aragorn for asking this question, as Gimli himself would have been unable. “If an Elf, any Elf, were to hear the sound of the Sea?”

“There is no means by which to be sure,” Undómiel said, equally soft. “For those who traversed its tracts to reach Middle-earth – or for those whose ancestors did – the Sea is said to hold notes of Mandos’s call. How much of that call might be audible to one who was born here, whose ancestors never left – or else to one whose heart remains firmly affixed within Middle-earth – it is never quite certain.”

“But it is likely that such an Elf – or Half-Elf, let us say, or Elf-kin – would hear such a call,” Aragorn pressed. “Even if they could do nothing to answer it.” The Man’s voice was thick with some riddle, some emotion, that Gimli had not the energy to try and decipher.

“It is likely,” Undómiel said softly.

At some point, Gimli thought, he thanked her, Arwen Undómiel Queen of the Reunited Kingdoms of the West, for her time and attentiveness – or at least he probably did – before sketching an urgent retreat.  

But back within the City, he let his feet take him where they would. The older quarters were good stone, solid stone, and most days, the thrill of them beneath his boots would have been a comfort in itself. Today, thought, it was not, and he stumbled on, unseeing, until a flash of green at the corner of his vision bade him stop.

It was a garden. Half-dead, likely bombed and burned during the Nazgul’s attacks on the City, but beneath and among the charred tangles of vine there could already be seen small tender buds, peeps of purple flower poking from their soft green tips, probably mere days away from full blossom.

How long he stood in the archway to that tiny garden, Gimli could not say. But when he realized why – when he saw, and understood, that he was treating this small miracle as a sign of sorts – he cleared his throat as best he could, and began to speak.  

“If you’re still here, Elf, please.” His voice faltered over the words, but they needed to be said. “Please – don’t hold back this time, not for me. Sounds like a nice enough place, the West – the Queen, she said it’s green, probably full of great old trees like you like, and – and there’ll be no more fighting, lad, no more suffering. You’ll be able to see again, eh, and if there’s horses there too, no more depending on other riders to lead them for you and make a hash of it. But.”

He paused again, briefly – blasted pollen, clogging up his throat and forcing tears to his eyes – before hurrying on. “But if you miss this chance, Elf, it’s missed, and no turning back from it, and – and I would never ask that of you, silly thing, I could never. Erm. Ehem. ‘M not supposed to be telling you this, but – I’ll be passing through, brief-like, in my own time. On my way to meet my Maker, I mean. Suppose His halls aren’t that far on from your lands, eh? You should go, now, so that I can see you again on my way through. I’ll miss you now, don’t think I won’t, but. Can’t have you stuck here for good, you know. Can’t have you deprived of your silly trees and things. End of all days is a long way off, I imagine, and you’d be bored here well before then.”

If this were a story, Gimli thought, then there would have been some sign – from Legolas's spirit, or else the Valar, or perhaps a kindly Fate – that his words had been heard and heeded. A convenient gust of wind coaxing one of the purple-green buds into early bloom, perhaps, or else a chime of far-off laughter, maybe even a brush of air against his shoulder from might have been a ghostly hand.

But this was no story, and there was no sign in all the wide, wide world that his words had been heard.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I can't access the original anymore, but a copy of katajainen's prompt I saved in January ~~i know, i know, this took me forever and i'm sorry~~ reads as follows:  
>  _The un-fix-it: what if either Gimli or Legolas DIDN'T make it to see the war ended and the Ring destroyed? Their road was a perilous one, after all._
> 
> _Bonus points if the surviving one never confessed his feelings._
> 
> _I dare you to make me cry big fat tears over this._
> 
> I leave it up to you to decide which part received most of my attention :)


End file.
